Project Management

The Top 7 Project Portfolio Management Solutions

Explore the top Project Portfolio Management Solutions offering project prioritization, resource optimization, and portfolio analytics features to maximize the value and success of project portfolios

Last updated on Apr 29, 2024

Written by Mirren McDade

Technical review by Laura Iannini

The Top 7 Project Portfolio Management Solutions include:

1. Celoxis
2. Clarity by Broadcom
3. Oracle Primavera P6 Enterprise Project Portfolio Management
4. Microsoft Project
5. Monday Work Management
6. Planview PPM Pro
7. Smartsheet

Project Portfolio Management (PPM) solutions enable businesses to manage, analyze, and report on their complete set of projects or portfolios in an integrated and coherent way. This facilitates informed decision-making, drives strategic alignment, enhances efficiency, and provides improved visibility into performance and resource allocation.

For project teams, a PPM solution acts as a centralized place for all project-related activities. It allows teams to plan, manage, and track the progress of projects, assign resources, and communicate. It also eliminates the need for juggling multiple tools, thereby streamlining the entire project management process.

The PPM solution market is highly competitive, with providers offering PPM tools with a wide range of capabilities. These tools often integrate seamlessly with widely used project management systems and provide comprehensive insights through the implementation of advanced analytics. Some also offer capabilities such as artificial intelligence and machine learning for predictive analytics and decision-making support.

In this guide, we will explore the top project portfolio management solutions, assessing their key features such as project and portfolio management, resource management, risk management, integration capabilities, and reporting.

Celoxis

Celoxis is a recognized project management and PPM software, deployed worldwide by various enterprises across diverse sectors. The software delivers efficient and robust analytics and dashboards to manage portfolios, teams, and operations.

Celoxis includes project request tracking, which consolidates requests from different sources to match demand with capacity. Its project planning tool enables the creation of dynamic plans that adapt to real-world changes automatically. Celoxis also offers project tracking where users can manage tasks, projects, and milestones from a single dashboard, supplemented with automatic email alerts for robust tracking. Their project accounting feature facilitates real-time visibility into budget spends, profitability, and receivables across projects and portfolios. The platform also provides a portfolio management component for aggregation and customization of project information, together with custom KPI tracking, and allows for tracking of business processes alongside projects with built-in workflow apps.

Celoxis is a comprehensive solution for businesses seeking a resourceful project management tool. It offers diverse features for efficient project planning, tracking, and accounting, as well as portfolio management and workflow integration, providing robust and effective project management capabilities.

Clarity by Broadcom

Broadcom’s Clarity is a robust investment portfolio management solution designed to streamline business and work management processes within organizations. This application offers a rich spectrum of functionalities, such as strategic portfolio management, investment tracking, resource allocation, and comprehensive financial management.

Clarity not only unifies and accelerates your digital transformation journey, but also ensures successful enterprise alignment. This is achieved through Strategic Portfolio Management (SPM), which links all tasks to higher strategic objectives illustrated on visual roadmaps. The tool constantly monitors project progress and rolls up aggregated costs from the core work, and also serves as a reliable platform for planning, tracking and forecasting costs. Through its comprehensive design, Clarity provides multiple perspectives, whether by product, capability, initiative, or objective. Users can quickly generate graphs or delve into underlying expenses with a single click, offering a continuously updated snapshot of current spending.

Broadcom’s Clarity software brings a range of crucial benefits, including optimal resource utilization, centralized planning and management, and real-time financial data representation. It streamlines portfolio management as well as ensuring transparency and alignment across the organization.

Oracle Primavera P6 Enterprise Project Portfolio Management

Oracle Primavera P6 Enterprise Project Portfolio Management (EPPM) is a project management solution designed to plan, schedule, and manage projects of all sizes. Primavera P6 EPPM enables global prioritization, planning, and execution of projects, programs, and portfolios with a user-friendly interface.

This solution offers multi-user access to schedules, resource optimization, and cost coordination, providing adaptable views and direct interfaces for team members to update status. Primavera P6 offers integrated cost and schedule management that improves budget accuracy and project progress tracking, linking cost codes to Primavera’s breakdown structures. Primavera P6 also includes schedule-based cash flow management and integrated change management features, helping to identify potential issues and impacts of proposed changes on costs and schedules. Its data-informed forecasts and project progress measurements are informed by Primavera EPPM data, thus increasing overall forecasting accuracy and efficiency.

Oracle Primavera P6 EPPM is comprehensive project management software with project planning, cost and schedule management, resource optimization, and forecast accuracy. It is a reliable tool to stay on top of project schedules, costs, and overall progress.

Microsoft Project

Microsoft Project is a Project Portfolio Management (PPM) tool that allows businesses to strategically plan, prioritize, and manage project and portfolio investments. The software offers firms an opportunity to explore various portfolio scenarios, aiding in selecting the most optimal strategic path considering cost and resource constraints.

The product offers comprehensive project and program visibility features, aggregating portfolios, and projects across an organization. This visibility is supplemented by an interactive roadmap, providing a holistic overview of business programs and projects. Microsoft Project also offers capabilities for advanced reporting using native OData, allowing users to transform complex data into actionable insights, and has a systematic process for capturing and evaluating project ideas from across the organization. It provides a well-structured mechanism to develop detailed business cases and project charters ready for management review and is customizable to align with various portfolio management needs, ensuring an efficient path to market.

Microsoft Project is a robust and adaptable PPM tool that offers businesses a myriad of features. These include strategic project and portfolio management, interactive visualization, and advanced reporting capabilities, making it an efficient solution for facilitating decision-making processes and market delivery.

Monday Work Management

Monday.com is a work management platform that enables teams to execute tasks, manage projects, and streamline processes in a coherent way. It aims to facilitate task execution and goal achievement at scale across different teams and departments.

The platform allows for task and project visualization in multiple views, including Gantt and Kanban, catering to various workflows. To enhance decision-making real-time dashboards are available, offering 30+ widgets for detailed insights into tasks and projects. A no-code building block feature facilitates the creation of tailored workflows to suit any business or work needs. Monday.com also includes over 200 pre-set automation recipes to improve work efficiency and an integration repository to centralize tasks by connecting other work tools into one platform. It also provides add-ons to expand the platform’s abilities. This platform can manage large-scale projects while tracking multiple parallel projects and team capabilities. It is useful for planning, organizing, managing resources, and coordinating daily functions across teams to boost business efficiency.

Monday.com is a flexible and integrated work management platform that enhances team task execution and project management, boosts productivity with customizable workflows, and provides efficient automation.

Planview PPM Pro

Planview PPM Pro software, previously known as Innotas, aids PMOs in assembling, prioritizing, and executing projects. This tool empowers PMOs to utilize resources in the most valuable way, whether they are just beginning or trying to elevate their PMO processes to the next level.

Key strengths of this tool include its user-friendly dashboards, robust security, strict compliance, committed privacy, and reliable infrastructure. Planview PPM includes project dashboards and configurable reports, giving stakeholders and executives detailed comprehension of project and portfolio status even without direct access to PPM Pro. Prioritizing customer information confidentiality, Planview fosters a culture of security. Compliance with stringent standards is consistently maintained with regular independent validation tests. Further, acknowledging the importance of data privacy, Planview secures your customer data with extreme care.

Planview’s SaaS solutions stand out due to their reliability, always being available whenever required. Planview PPM Pro presents itself as an exceptional tool for PMOs seeking to optimize their project management. This solution enables PMOs to strategically concentrate resources on the most valuable work, thereby improving project success rates.

Smartsheet

Smartsheet is a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) that offers solutions for work management and collaboration. By facilitating project planning, alignment, implementation, and scaling, Smartsheet allows individuals to efficiently transition strategies into actions.

Key features of Smartsheet include eliminating inefficiencies in processes while giving real-time visibility and precise reporting. It replaces manual follow-ups and uncertainties about outcomes with faster project delivery, incremental value realization, and rapid scaling across all project portfolios. Smartsheet strikes a balance between top-down and bottom-up portfolio management methods, promoting project consistency through standardizing processes, without neglecting user-friendly experiences or user-driven innovation. It also provides integration options with platforms like Slack, Google Workspace, Jira, ServiceNow, and Microsoft 365, bringing all pertinent information onto a single platform for improved collaboration and decision-making.

Smartsheet for PPM is a flexible and collaborative platform that enables operational leaders to design reusable project management frameworks. It also liberates project teams to be more agile, creative, and efficient in their work, increasing overall productivity.

The Top 7 Project Portfolio Management Solutions

Everything You Need to Know About Project Portfolio Management Solutions (FAQs)

What Is A Project Portfolio Management Solution?

Project portfolio management refers to the centralized management of one or multiple project portfolios to achieve a business’s strategic objectives. Project portfolio management brings together strategy and implementation with the purpose of providing users with a single source of truth that offers visibility, optimized utilization of resources, and forecasting of risk and returns to ensure the portfolio is balanced and focused on the correct things.

Keeping track of multiple projects while staying well informed on overall portfolio performance is not easy; this is where Project Portfolio Management (PPM) solutions come in. These are software tools that allow organizations to monitor and manage multiple projects simultaneously. By consolidating data from each project, these systems provide a unified, overarching view to the management. This data includes project timelines, resource allocation, costs, risk analysis, and delivery deadlines.

How Do Project Portfolio Management Solutions Work?

PPM solutions act as a holistic system, offering features like portfolio analytics, project prioritization, capacity planning, resource management, and risk management. When a new project is proposed, the PPM system helps to evaluate whether it aligns with the company’s strategic goals, what resources are required, and the associated potential risks. This enables businesses to make the most effective decisions about which projects to undertake and in which sequence.

PPM solutions are designed to help streamline project management processes. They provide valuable insights into the portfolio’s overall performance, individual project status, and potential risks. This allows managers to make educated decisions about project prioritization, resource distribution, and risk mitigation, thereby aiding in strategic decision-making and overall project success.

What Are The Benefits Of Using A Project Portfolio Management Solution?

Project Portfolio Management is a single, straightforward way to evaluate business objectives across current and potential projects. It does this using key indicators such as teamwork and healthy analytical data to give accurate insights. It is a useful tool for organizations anticipating a large volume of upcoming projects. Some specific benefits of using a portfolio management solution include:

Centralizing organizational goals and objectives
A simple yet highly functional interface
Better collaboration and communication
Easier visualization and organization of projects
Robust reporting analytics

The overall aim of project portfolio management solutions is to assist in improving planning and decision making with regards to project costs versus benefit.

What Is The Difference Between Project Portfolio Management Solutions And Project Management Software?

Project Portfolio Management (PPM) solutions and Project Management Software (PMS) have distinct, but complimentary, purposes within an organization. PPM focuses on managing a portfolio of projects across the organization, providing a centralized platform for overseeing various projects and prioritizing investments, allocating resources, and aligning portfolios with strategic goals. PMS differs as its focus is on individual projects, including things like tasks, timelines, resources, and deliverables. It is designed to support managers and teams in carrying through specific projects from beginning to end.

Some organizations will choose to use their project management software to manage their project portfolio. However, this approach is not ideal as the more rapidly your organization scales and grows its operations, the more control you will require over what is going on across your portfolio.

Some drawbacks of using project management software for PPM include:

It’s easy to lose the strategic overview. The task-oriented structure of a Project Management Solution means your team runs the risk of losing the context and clarity they need to connect project execution with the core vision and company goals.
Utilization of resources is not optimized. Without PPM software you risk focusing your time and people in the wrong areas, leading to wasted resources. Projects can end up conflicting and resources can become over stretched. This can result in the organization missing key strategic goals.
Data for reporting is not gathered quickly. Project Management Platforms often lack the integrations needed to keep your entire tech stack united.
It is more difficult to keep everyone aligned. Things like silos and disconnected docs, projects, and spreadsheets are difficult to avoid if you do not have the right tools for maintaining alignment.

Essentially, Project Management Software deals with the execution of individual projects, while Project Portfolio Management software provides a broader perspective by overseeing several projects within an organization and ensuring they remain in line with strategic goals and priorities.

What Features Should You Look For When Choosing Project Portfolio Management Solutions?

When selecting a Project Portfolio Management solution, consider the following features:

Portfolio Planning and Prioritization. It is important that any PPM solution you choose can define project portfolios and prioritize them based on ROI, resource availability, and strategic objectives. Using scenario planning, what-if analysis, and portfolio optimization leads to better evaluation of various scenarios and more informed decision making.
Resource Management. The ability to oversee and allocate resources appropriately based on project needs helps to ensure effective utilization of resources across projects, and to balance workloads. This helps to avoid overallocation or under allocation.
Cost Tracking. Budgeting and cost tracking features help to keep project budgets and expenses in line, and also help by forecasting financial performance.
Risk Management. Risk management and mitigation features work to identify, assess, and manage risk across project portfolios. This is important for implementing risk mitigation strategies and ensuring proactive risk management.
Timeline Management. The ability to create timelines and track project deliverables helps organizations to more effectively allocate their resources, monitor progress, and make sure projects are delivered on time.
Reporting & Analytics. Reporting and analytic capabilities in a PPM solution help to empower organizations to optimize their project portfolio management, improve decision-making, and drive better business outcomes. It does this via comprehensive reporting based data from across the project portfolio.
Integration. Compatibility with other systems used in the organization like ERP and CRM is vital as this integration enhances the effectiveness of PPM by enabling seamless data exchange, streamlining workflow, and providing stakeholders with timely insights that help to improve project outcomes.

Organizations should make sure to choose a PPM tool that not only enhances project management processes, but also aligns with your business objectives. A good PPM solution should not just provide a high-level overview of all projects but also offer detailed insights for effective management and control.

Mirren McDade

Senior Journalist & Content Writer

Mirren McDade is a senior writer and journalist at Expert Insights, spending each day researching, writing, editing and publishing content, covering a variety of topics and solutions, and interviewing industry experts. She is an experienced copywriter with a background in a range of industries, including cloud business technologies, cloud security, information security and cyber security, and has conducted interviews with several industry experts. Mirren holds a First Class Honors degree in English from Edinburgh Napier University.

Laura Iannini

Cybersecurity Analyst

Laura Iannini is an Information Security Engineer. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Cybersecurity from the University of West Florida. Laura has experience with a variety of cybersecurity platforms and leads technical reviews of leading solutions. She conducts thorough product tests to ensure that Expert Insights’ reviews are definitive and insightful.